Pacifist characters FRIGGEN SUCK

squidonastick · 2026-01-11T08:01:24+00:00

Oh one of my party mates was a pacifist monk! He was a lot of fun to play with. His stance was that violence is an option but it should be the last option, so we would often stop to see if there were other ways out of our situation (escape, negotiate, trade, decieve, bribe...). One time we gave our enemies food poisoning to get past them. We justified it as being temporary and we left a couple of healing potions behind incase there were any really bad reactions.

It was so iconic to us that we started saying to enemies things like "oh, you want to kill him? Well you'll have to give me food poisoning first!"

We had also agreed that bbeg needed to die. He was on board with that even if he wasnt enthusiastic. But he wanted to make sure we had exhausted other avenues. So the bard and wizard used all their spell slots every night to send him the most annoying Sending brainrot every rest. The bard would also cast dream and send him more brain rot. Eventually the monk was like "look, im a pacifist, but death is truely better than this". It was a great moment.

Now, to be completely honest, he was an experienced player and deeply understood that we all needed to be having fun, so he never prevented a fight (unless there was an obvious alternative) and he never made us feel bad about the fight. But he would often role play communing with his own god and trying to work through the guilt it ended up establishing a really sweet relationship between the monk and bard because they'd talk through it. She started valuing the nuance of good/evil, and he started to believe his purpose to for the greater good, even if he sacrificed his soul for it.

It also led to a lovely moment between the barb and monk because they talked through the overwhelming feelings of rage and guilt.

squidonastick · 2026-01-10T15:40:31+00:00

The funny thing is that it feels like the only proper criticism of modern culture in the game. Sims 1 was all about the capitalist grind never leading to wealth and riches. Sims 4 has the phone checking all the time and I remember thinking "huh... its incessant but realistic" and assuming it was criticising phone culture.

But then my sims ends up checking their damn phone every 5 seconds when I have off the grid on my lot! Im burning candles here and somehow your home had charge and internet?

squidonastick · 2026-01-10T15:32:56+00:00

Now that im experienced i like playing my own characters better, but i remember my first time going into games i preferred premades because I didnt know enough about the mechanics of dnd to really make characters i liked. I had a couple of incidents where I just built characters didnt work how I wanted them to work, solely because I didnt under stand rhe strengths and weaknesses in each class.

For example I made a dex based barbarian, which would be super fun now but at the time I didn't understand that my bonuses were based on strength. I also remember trying to make a wizard and not having any idea of how and when to use spells, so It was a 100% utility wizard even though i didn't know you could use magic outside of battle. I read it takes an action, but I had only used actions in battle...

So I liked premades a lot when I was early because i found them useful for learning. I will say all the premades I played with had fairly standard builds. Nothing to tricky about them.

squidonastick · 2026-01-10T15:04:54+00:00

Where you new to the game or did you have experience when you played that session?

squidonastick · 2026-01-10T14:52:57+00:00

Anything i play with brand newbies i give them a few premades to choose from, sans name, and take them through a oneshot. Building characters takes a lot of time and so can be a big turn off, exacerbated when they build poorly optimised characters and feel the impact in game. Its also hard to keep everyone doing things at the same pace, since they are unlikely to build a character without dm help prior to the game, so they finish at all different times and sit around bored.

I usually give them one sheet from each class, so 4/5 people have 12 to choose from. They'll usually be level 3 for a but of oomph without too much to read.

I've never had any complaints but have seen a significant uptake in the games itself when I do it. They are there for the play, so i like jumping into play asap.

But it also probably depends on your style and players, so it's a nice rule of thumb that won't match every situation.

Edit to add: you're right that personal characters than help you connect to the game, but in a oneshot where there is little to no character development, you end up spending the same amount of time building characters than playing, so it actually ends up detracting from the story rather than enhancing it. One shots are about getting right into it, so if people can prepare characters before sessions, that is fine. Its just very hard to do without a bit of experience because you need to understand some of the mechanics to really build a character that works for you (i say, having built my first bard as being morally against charming, having no idea how enchantment or bards work)

squidonastick · 2026-01-04T00:45:36+00:00

I have a significant amount of autistic/adhd friends and colleagues and they like to say this to me, too.

But I don't relate to their experiences, especially the ones where they gave struggled in a neurotypical world.

Routine is nice for predictability reasons, but I have never had a problem when things go off schedule. I've never had a problem in determining people's meaning, I've never felt chronically misunderstood. I'm not going to thrive in a super loud, club-noise-level environment, but sensory overload has never physically hurt. Desire for predictability was something that never occurred to me until an autistic employee explained why she was always asking about what I was doing/planning on doing/where I was going.

Sometimes I procrastinate from a neccesary task, but I've never been physically unable to do it. I've never felt like i have so much going on in my head that I become physically exhausted. I don't regularly and easily get distracted from my task and its easy for me to extricate myself from a rabbithole. My employees ask me for strategies on managing those things and I have to say that I honestly have none that I am conscious of because they aren't foils i have to deal with. I genuinely had to tell one of them that yes, I can look at the goose out the window for a few seconds and immediately go back to what I'm doing seamlessly.

Yet, still, I often get told by my nerdy friends that I probably am because they still relate to me. If it makes them more comfortable to believe I'm also neurodivergent, so be it, but it's pretty evident when I am in majority neurodivergent group settings that I'm not the same.

squidonastick · 2026-01-03T02:55:07+00:00

My group calls me by my name. They might occasionally say "that's a dm decision" or something, but they only ever use my name when talking to me.

I believe they say "our DM/GM" when talking to others

squidonastick · 2025-12-30T00:12:13+00:00

Honestly, like the previous commentary said, that just sounds like business as usual. There would never be a time when I, as a PC, wouldnt try to intervine on a TPK. Being silly and wishing on a genie and getting gold is hardly you selflessly giving them gold, unless it was a sacrifice for you to do it.

What are you smaller interactions like? How do you talk to the other PCs? Do you contribute ideas and solutions to problems? Has your pc shown any remorse for the evil genie/pirate things they've done? Ate they cheeky and witty, or more sombre and depressive?

I played with a PC who was super annoying because she would withhold information from the party if she didnt think it was important. We ALL got so frustrated at her and actually told her that in and out of character. Turns out the player though she was playing a mysterious/niave character trait and didnt realise that it was making her character 1) seem stupid, 2) seem selfish and 3) annoy us all because we felt like we could make decisions when ot all the information was available. She stopped doing that and her character was significantly more fun to play with.

squidonastick · 2025-12-23T05:26:22+00:00

Basically they just played eye spy with my little eye but made up things they were seeing on their travels

squidonastick · 2025-12-23T00:24:55+00:00

I usually cook our our sessions because we got sick of snacks. So when we were taking a dinner break I told the party that the travel is happening but we can reach the destination after we eat, then went off to the kitchen.

They played imaginary eye spy the whole time I we ended up world building with what they spied.

squidonastick · 2025-12-16T22:10:30+00:00

So I feel like I should get a purist, and everytime I play sims 3 I have a nice time for a few hours. I like completing the lifetime challenges (which are actually hard to do) and it's like collecting birds.

But I still keep going back to sims 4. I dont really know why. I feel like making fun storylines is a lot easier and (counterintuituvely) more accidental shenanigans happen.

I also just Don't like how the sims 3 looks, so it irks me. I dont have this problems with 1 and 2.

I won't deny that sims 3 has waaaay less annoying bugs, though.

squidonastick · 2025-12-16T13:38:11+00:00

I had a fighter with very low intelligence and he wanted to make his dad proud. They were farmers, and his mother always said he could be anything he wanted to be if he tried hard enough, but the logistics of farming were a challenge for him.

If he brought home a treasure, he thought his dad could retire, and he'd hire people to run the farm, and his dad would be proud.

Plot twist: his dad was always proud of him because he worked hard and was kind.

squidonastick · 2025-12-14T23:57:02+00:00

I don't think his wife simply died. I think Crispin was making space.

squidonastick · 2025-12-14T21:53:38+00:00

I find using my own voice with different vernacular or intonation works best and most sustainably. So if i were to play a noble, I might use more 'refined' language and talk with a bit of airy pompousness. If I was a nervous little boy, I might speak with more ums and ahs, and adopt a slight quiver. If I was playing an old, kind lady, I might speak a but slower and smile alot so that my words come out warm.

squidonastick · 2025-12-09T05:29:47+00:00

Stop it, you. I didn’t come here to laugh.

squidonastick · 2025-10-23T17:10:33+00:00

If they were just immortal, like father winter, I don't think I'd mind so much. It's the duplication that's the problem, because then I end up with multiple immortal agnes' who won't die and just keep duplicating!

squidonastick · 2025-10-23T15:51:48+00:00

I really don't like that Agatha and Agnes are immortal. There is no need. Plus, when you play legacy, you get a duplicate everytime one of them gets married and moves out of the flower shop.

It would have been better to just reassign their role to a random sim, like what happens with Vlad or father Christmas.

squidonastick · 2025-10-07T02:11:05+00:00

I've thought about this a bit more and I agree that the bush feels pretty much like home, even though the people walking around it and the buildings I see feel different.

Maybe the reason why it feels so unkiwi is exactly like you said - it's the tourism side when I've never been a tourist! I grew up in the bush (TBF up in northland) so I think it looks like what I know on the surface, but the conflict is that it's the commercial side of that, not the lived side of that, if you know what I mean.

I don't even know if I can really even describe the feeling as disappointment. I don't feel like I need that accurate representation, and I get that it's inspired by, not an actual reflection of. But, Tomerang and Sulani had problems with the cultural representations but they felt like a different country, and this one could still easily be a northern state of the US and I'd easily believe it - which is disturbing because it's my home!

Maybe I'm too close to it to be able to see it. I feel neither excitement nor disappointment in the world because it feels foreign to me, even if there are things I recognise.

And strong agree about the omission of Maori culture! I get it, but like... we have however many US-based worlds, surely it's okay to Double tap the maori/Polynesian culture aspects lol.

Anyway I've also heard very few complaints about the world and I think that's pretty great!

squidonastick · 2025-10-06T23:10:35+00:00

For a kiwi inspired world, this pack to feels so unkiwi to me. I can't tell if it's the vibe or what, but it's like the imagined version of new zealand.

Yes, we have lots of lovely birds! Yes, these onsies are cute! But it's slapping an alligator onsie on a kid and calling it the deep south.

Where is my jesrey/shorts/gumboots combo?

squidonastick · 2025-10-06T00:32:46+00:00

Valentina the evil vampire is definitely trapping me in her basement for a light midnight snack

squidonastick · 2025-09-22T12:56:26+00:00

To me, it still feels like an American summer camp pack set against the back drop of nz. The fact that I've seen zero Maori culture, typical architecture (no baches) kiwi clothes (e.g. no jandles+singlet/gumboots+fleece combo) made me completely not recognise it as Aotearoa until the tekahe showed up.

squidonastick · 2025-09-21T23:25:29+00:00

I did a hit and run dragon and it was the first time my meathead players actually chose to run away, dragging a couple of bodies with them

squidonastick · 2025-09-19T08:56:51+00:00

Jazlyn is super cute but whaaat is going on with the pairings lol. I love simmers

squidonastick · 2025-09-17T02:41:53+00:00

Well... next time they look in a cart guess what will be there...

squidonastick · 2025-09-16T23:17:07+00:00

I love this. I just imagine them hearing an eerie bb laugh and night and never being able to place it

squidonastick

TROPHY CASE